Sunset Celebration: Pt. 2

I resisted at first, but finally Sunset Celebration won me over and I bought it. How could I hold out on something that is so Susan Hayward? As a special bonus to readers, I have some background information directly from Vince Nowell, the creative designer behind this ensemble:

"Sunset Celebration" was the third design idea I presented for the Gene collection, after having been chosen to be part of Gene's design team in 1998. This began as a design I created for my personal collection, but it turned out so beautiful that I presented the idea to Joan Greene, and the rest is history. At the time, there had been some talk that there might be an African American female character added to the lineup—a character who would be a jazz singer. Without having seen any sketches or a finished doll of this possible character, this design was created especially for her. I thought the warm tones of orange, yellow and pink would play beautifully against the darker skintone, and were reminiscent of the colors of a beautiful sunset. The original working title was "Sunset Serenade" (which, ironically, was the title of a dressed Violet doll produced by Integrity Toys in 2009), but the title was changed to "Sunset Celebration" when it was decided that the storyline would center around Gene's birthday. In my personal collection, it is Violet Waters who owns this gown. It was always meant to be hers, as far as I'm concerned, and if you haven't tried it on your Violet doll, I strongly suggest you do so. You'll definitely see how beautifully she wears it. A couple of related side notes:

1. Dave commented in his initial review that this gown is a little doll-ish. When I first read this I had to giggle, because the roots of this gown also played homage to the full skirted cocktail dresses that the Barbie doll had in her earlier wardrobe.

2. This design is true to the original prototype I designed in every sense of the word; no changes were made from prototype to production, and I'm very proud of that fact.



Many thanks to Vince for sharing this great info; and you can be sure that in the near future you'll be seeing a photo of Violet here wearing Sunset Celebration.

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